Is Sherbet Sherbert?

Sherbet and Sherbert are two words you might hear around the dinner table come dessert time. But are they the same thing, or vastly different foods?

The Short Answer

Sherbet is not sherbert. There is no such thing as sherbert.

The Long Answer

I knew this was going to be a fun one to write. As a kid I used to always go to my grandma’s house for dinner and for dessert she would give us “sherbert.” What we were actually having was sherbet. That’s the proper name for this popular frozen dessert featuring fruit juices added to milk or cream. So where does the word sherbert come from?

It’s a mispronunciation that has become commonplace in households all over the United States. The funny part is, my spell check underlines sherbert every time I try to write it, so it’s not even a real word at all. We touched on this one a bit in our article where we discussed the common question “Are sherbet and sorbet the same thing?”, but it was entertaining enough to me where I thought it should get its own entry.